


Those Who Wander

by storydragon



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Children, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, Gen, Magic, Monsters, inspired by OTGW, no ships in this one bc they're all kids and that's just not happening ok
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 09:00:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3971920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storydragon/pseuds/storydragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beware, dear travellers, the Wood of Lost Things<br/>Where no child should play, and no church choir sings<br/>Abandon all hope with the trinkets and rings<br/>Do not stray from the path<br/>Do not invoke the wrath<br/>Of the dark and the dangerous Wood of Lost Things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Who Wander

**Author's Note:**

  * For [24bookworm68](https://archiveofourown.org/users/24bookworm68/gifts).



> Dedicated to Ally, Supreme High Nerd. Happy birthday!!
> 
> SO! I hope you all like this one, too. This is something I'm a bit more at home with, so that hopefully means good things. Enjoy! c:
> 
> (More tags may be changed/added as I go, when I have a clearer picture of what's happening)

It started with the boots. Or rather, the lack of them.

Eren had thought the house was a little quieter than normal. Indeed, it had been some time since his little brother had pestered him last, and that was certainly unusual - on a good day, Armin would follow him till he had to hide to be able to spend time with his sister in peace. On a bad day, there was no shaking him.

So naturally, when Armin didn’t show up for hours, even when Eren was in the house, he began to- well, not worry. More than anything, he was enjoying himself. But he did wonder. Mikasa started to talk about going to find him, just to check on him, but Eren told her not to worry so much. They should just enjoy it while they could, he said, Armin was bound to find them eventually. His sister didn’t look convinced, but she let the subject go.

As dinner drew closer and Mother started asking questions, Armin’s absence became somewhat harder to ignore. She searched the rooms that hadn’t stirred all day, and called out into the garden, into the patches where the summer wildflowers were growing tall enough to hide a little boy, a boy too young to keep up with his siblings, but just old enough to try.

Dinner came, and Armin did not. When the other two children came home, Armin’s boots were not in their place by the door. This was an hour ago.

Now, Eren and Mikasa sit in their places at the table, staring across at each other. The house is otherwise empty, and has been since Mother fetched Father and some others from the village to help search for their son, and there is still a distinct and alarming absence of boots. The children are forbidden to leave the house until this mess is over, which it will be, because Mother said so, and that’s just how it works.

“Why would he run away?” Eren asks for what feels like the eightieth time. Mikasa merely sighs.

“You did yell at him.”

“I did not!” A lie. Mikasa’s stare grows disapproving. “... I didn’t mean to _upset_ him.” Another lie.

Armin had- _has_ , he still has, he’s perfectly _fine_ \- an irritating habit of taking things literally. He might not admit it, but Eren only half believes himself when he says that he didn’t want Armin to take “Get lost” literally too. Lord, it amazes him that a child so utterly adoring of him could be so disobedient, until the one time it works out worst.

Armin always has loved adventures. That was Eren’s job, to keep an eye on him, to stop him from running off into the woods - it’s not a job any ten year old boy could ever wish for. In Eren’s opinion, all it ever did was stop him from having adventures of his own.

But not in the wood. Never, not _ever_ in the wood.

“I’m going to go find him,” Eren says, breaking the slowly reforming silence. Eren has a habit of saying things he will soon regret, at times. This just so happens to be one such time. But it’s what must be done - after all, it _is_ his job to take care of his brother. “You stay here and tell Mother if she comes back before I do.”

Eren regrets his words the second he sees Mikasa’s face change from alarmed to confused to downright terrifying in the space of three seconds. Eren yelps as Mikasa lunges forward over the table, catching him by the collar before he can even slide out of his seat.

“I’m not going to stay here and let you go off without me,” Mikasa says, her voice so quiet and gentle and, somehow, the most frightening thing Eren’s ever heard.

It’s a well known rule in the village that you do _not_ make Mikasa angry- or at least, more of a general guideline for living to see another sunrise. Eren decides it’s not worth the protest.

“Fine,” he says, and Mikasa lets go. “But we’ll have to leave a note.”

He fetches a pencil, and begins scribbling a hasty message on the back of one of Armin’s many drawings. (As far as Eren can foresee, Armin will surely be too busy thanking his heroic siblings for bringing him home safe to mind. And in Eren’s opinion, the drawing isn’t even that good anyway.)

_Dear Mum_

__

_Me and Mikasa are going to find Armin. Dont worry about us, well be back soon._

__

_Eren_

_ps If we find him can we have more chocolat cake_

Deeming the note suitably mistake-free (Mikasa, looking over his shoulder, begs to differ, but spelling and punctuation have never been one of Eren’s priorities in life), Eren pins it to the table under an abandoned glass.

With Eren’s coat on, and Mikasa bundled up in her red wool scarf, they make their way into the village, and the house is empty.

The village is small, and, in the light of evening, empty, but feels so much fuller where it’s packed to bursting with hopeful, searching cries of Armin’s name. They avoid the sources of the voices, using the roads where two children would go unnoticed, as the quiet ones so often do. They have little success, as they suppose they _knew_ they would, because Armin was never interested in the _village_ , not at all. But they didn’t want to mention the place they know he’ll have gone to, didn’t want to think about it, but now they’re back where they started and when they share a dark, fearful look they know there’s nowhere else to check.

* * *

_“Eren! Eren! Wait for me!”_

__

_Eren groaned as he came to a halt for the fifth time on a large stone in the middle of the rushing stream. A little blond head bobbed slowly towards them as the five year old stumbled over a bank, and splashed through the stream to the edge of Eren’s rock where the water was deep enough for the current to splash browned water into Armin’s boots._

__

_“Stop being so slow, Armin,” Eren grumbled, as Mikasa pulled the filthy, dripping child from the water. “We can’t keep stopping for you like this all the time.”_

__

_Armin pouted, but Mikasa shook her head. “We’re going to have to turn back anyway,” she told them, “If we go too far, we’ll start to hit trees.”_

__

_“But I wanna go to the river!” Armin cried. “I wanna find the end!”_

__

_“S’just more water, Armin, that’s all. You just end up in the sea,” Eren said, leading the the party back through the laziest parts of the stream, Armin still in Mikasa’s arms as their splish-splashing boots marked their path._

__

_“Wanna see the sea!”_

__

_“We can’t,” Mikasa said, trying once more to explain to the sulky kid. “The Wood is in the way. See.”_

__

_She turned around to point over the rock they’d just left, over the rolling yellow fields and green patches spotted with wildflowers, to where the dark pines of the Wood began like another country altogether. Armin’s big blue eyes widened at the sight, staring over at where the tree roots spread into the fields like crooked wooden fingers gripping the land. Around the bases of the pines, the grass was deadened and wilted among the carpet of pine needles._

__

_“What’s in there?” he whispered into Mikasa’s hair._

__

_“Monsters,” Eren said, impatience all too clear in his voice, and he tugged on Mikasa’s arm to pull them away. Even as they headed back towards the village, Armin still stared intently over his sister’s shoulder._

__

_“I thought monsters were made up!”_

__

_“Not in the Wood.”_

__

_“Can we play there tomorrow?”_

__

_Eren stopped short, and Mikasa almost walked into the back of him._

__

_“No,” he said, his little face creased into frown, suddenly much more serious than he was before. It disturbed him, how entranced Armin seemed, his eyes locked on the trees with a look of worrying_ want _. And Eren knew from experience that Armin never gave up on what he wanted, never until he had it. For such a sweet little boy, Armin was_ clever _. “No- hey, look at me! You don’t go in those trees, you hear me?”_

__

_“Why not?”_

__

_“Because you won’t come out again.” His little brother’s eyes wandered back to the Wood, and Eren moved in front, blocking his view. “Armin, promise me you will never, not ever go into the Wood.” Armin hesitated. “Armin!”_

__

_The child pouted once again, looking to Mikasa, but only received a stern glance in return. “Promise?”she asked, giving the kid a nudge with her arm._

__

_“... I promise.”_

__

_Eren should have known Armin wouldn’t give up that easily._

* * *

_I should have been more careful_ , Eren tells himself, on the last legs of their journey, _I should have been better to him_. Maybe then he would have listened. He’d warned his brother time and time again, and yet…

_No!_ a part of Eren protests, and his conscience is battered into submission by this new, stubborn little voice. If Eren had the right words, he’d know it as his pride. Although, of course, he’d never admit to it. (Pride is a funny thing - it may be loud, but it grows oddly shy when it comes to itself.) _No, it’s his own stupid fault. Armin should just grow up and stop being so stupid._ Eren smiles a little to himself, feeling a bit better with denial forming a bridge between himself and his worries. _Him and his silly fantasies, he probably ran off chasing a fairy or something. I didn’t do anything!_

__

“Eren.”

Eren doesn’t feel so sure of himself when he realises where they are - and if he’d regained any confidence at all, it drains away to fear when he sees why Mikasa had called him.

They have reached the east edge of the Wood.

The east edge is simply called the east edge because this is the east-facing border - people often wonder if there is another edge in another direction, or even an _end_ to the Wood, for nobody has ever bothered to measure it. It is widely assumed that the other edges never come, and so the Wood spreads on forevermore, and as long as nothing _leaves_ the Wood, then that is what people are happy believing.

Because the inside, oh, that is where the real fear lies.

It could have been called a jungle, but there was too much order to it, not so much overgrown as it was imposing, and the constant chill in the air around the Wood shattered any chance it had of being tropical. It could have been called a forest, but the word didn’t seem to do it justice, didn’t convey the same darkness that the Wood itself does. No, it’s a definite wood, as dense as the lumber for which it was named, as dark as the word feels, and as mysterious as the start of a question, which the word even _sounds_ like. What _would_ you find in there? _Would_ you go mad? _Would_ you ever return?

Yes. That is the wood.

And Eren and his Pride may not admit to many fears, but there’s something about standing in the shadow of the tall, silent trees and staring into the dark unknown beneath them that makes him feel unbelievably… small. And there’s something worse about seeing Mikasa at the mouth of the danger, scarf covering the fearful frown on her face as she stares down at a boggy patch of ferns. Or rather, what’s stuck under the ferns.

Boots. Small, muddy, and undeniably _Armin’s_ boots.

Eren kneels beside the boots, all too visible where Mikasa’s small hands push the leaves away. There’s no denying it now, not anymore, and they both know it. There’s no more pretending Armin’s fine, there is only _this_.

“Hey! Hey, get away from there!”

The shout breaks the silence like a stone through a window, and the children almost fall into the ferns with the shock of it. Eren immediately decides he’s not too fond of this person.

They turn to see another kid running towards them - Eren groans as he approaches, recognising him immediately as the Woodwatcher’s son, a rather chubby blond kid by the name of Jean. To put it lightly, he’s not exactly Eren’s favourite classmate.

“What are you doing here? Nobody’s ‘sposed to go in the Wood! My dad says so,” Jean says, with an air of superiority in his voice that Eren has never been able to stand. Jean seems a little too proud of the fact that he can look down on the two in their current position - although, even when Eren isn’t crouching down, it’s not all that hard. “Oh. It’s you. What are you after?”

“Our brother’s run off into the Wood, and I’m gonna go find him,” Eren declares. He’s vaguely aware that this is another split-second decision he’s sure to regret later, but once again, it’s what must be done. Mikasa barely even looks surprised.

“ _We_ are going to find him.”

“Yeah!”

Jean merely blinks at them in confusion for a second. They might as well have told him they were going to teach a bear to tap-dance. “You can’t,” Jean says, simply. “Your brother’s lost. You won’t find him again, you know that, right?”

_Yes_. “Says _who_?” Eren retorts.

“Says my dad, and he knows more about the Wood than anyone.”

“He can’t be that good at his job then, if he let a kid through, he’s supposed to _stop_ people going in!”

Eren is silenced by Mikasa’s hand on his shoulder, and he shuts his mouth on the rage just waiting to come flying out at Jean. Armin may be annoying, but nobody’s going to talk about him like that. (No matter how much he believes it himself.) He stays rooted to the spot - he hadn’t even felt himself stand up - as Mikasa steps between the two scowling boys. Eren can see Jean’s attitude changing the closer Mikasa gets, his face falling from a defiant frown to a look of mild terror.

“Jean.”

“Y-yeah?”

“We’re going to find our brother whether you like it or not. And if you think you know better, then you should come with us and prove it,” she says, her voice quiet, but steady and clear as the toll of a funeral bell. “And your family _are_ the Woodwatchers, so if you let a kid through, you should be the one getting him back, don’cha think?”

Jean looks at Mikasa like she’s stark raving mad for a while, until Eren gives him the final, smug-voiced nudge he needs to agree: “‘Course, if you’re too _chicken_ …”

And the spark is lit in Jean’s eyes, and the siblings share a quick look of victory, knowing as well as Jean does that if he doesn’t accompany them to spare his own reputation, he’ll do it purely to prove Eren Jaeger wrong. “ _Fine_ ,” Jean says, drawing himself up taller, but there’s a waver in his cocky demeanour when he looks to the Wood. No matter what he says, the other two realise, Jean’s _terrified_ of these woods.

Mikasa gives him a nudge on the arm, jerking the other kid back to reality. “Hey. Let’s go.”

“N-now?”

Eren rolls his eyes. “If you wanna wait, Armin’s just gonna go further, and we’ll have to stay in there for _longer_ -”

“Now’s good,” Jean interrupts before Eren can even finish, and shoots a shared glare Eren’s way as Mikasa takes them each by the sleeve and pulls them towards the gaping maw of the Wood, and they hold their breath as they cross the threshold of what feels like another world, disappearing into the dark.

Over the fields, a woman cries out in despair as she finds the note from her two remaining children. Fewer cries ring out in the village as people begin to give up on Armin, believing the whole endeavour to be a fruitless one. The stream still rushes through darkening fields, and the wildflowers have begun to wilt, and nature continues its cycle. Nobody notices the boots in the ferns, nor will they be brave enough to go as far as the three - somewhat unwilling - explorers braving territory never explored before, and breaking the number one rule that the village has held since before anyone can remember:

**  
**You must never, not ever, go into the Wood.


End file.
